BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Postal Museum -- Exhibit (MIA Galleries 3): Customers and Communities

DC -- Natl Postal Museum -- Exhibit (MIA Galleries 3): Customers and Communities:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SIPMCC_140706_001.JPG: Customers & Communities
2. SIPMCC_140706_004.JPG: Serving the Cities: In 1860, fewer than 13 percent of Americans lived in urban areas and only nine cities could claim 50,000 or more residents. Thirty years later, however, the urban population was soaring. By 1898, 30 percent of Americans were city dwellers, and Kansas City, Minneapolis, and other midwestern cities grew by more than 1,000 percent. Rising population and the growth of businesses sent mail volume to new heights. The cities thrived on commerce, and the lifeblood of commerce was the U.S. mail. By 1900, the Post Office Department was serving citizens scattered sparsely over vast territories and millions crowded together within a few square miles.
3. SIPMCC_140706_011.JPG: The Bond of the Scattered Family: In the 1880s and 1890s, immigrants poured into U.S. cities, thousands of miles from families and friends. Letters became their only link with their past lives. In 1889 alone, over 87 million letters and cards were exchanged between Europe and America, 22 times the correspondence that flowed annually between the two continents before the Civil War. Letters connected these immigrants first to their homelands and later to children and grandchildren as these new American generations moved on to other parts of this nation. What did recent immigrants and the families back home think of life in the new country? Their letters back and forth were read eagerly and shared with other relatives and friends, sustaining family ties across continents and oceans.
4. SIPMCC_140706_020.JPG: Serving the Cities
5. SIPMCC_140706_025.JPG: Free Home Delivery: Free mail delivery was not available before 1863. Many large post offices had letter carriers, but they weren't paid by the government. The carriers earned their wages by charging recipients one or two cents for each delivered letter. Most people saved their pennies and picked up their own mail. City Free Delivery Service began during the Civil War in Cleveland, Ohio, when postal employee Joseph Briggs saw women and children waiting in long lines for letters from their loved ones at war. He persuaded postal officials to deliver letters to the city's citizens for free. The service was an instant success.
6. SIPMCC_140706_027.JPG: Postmaster General Montgomery Blair was so impressed with Briggs' idea that he asked him to establish City Free Delivery Service throughout the United States.
7. SIPMCC_140706_032.JPG: In 1863, Joseph Briggs organized City Free Delivery Service in 49 Northern cities, using 449 letter carriers. The service was very popular. By 1869 City Free Delivery produced ten times its cost in new revenues as more and more people began to send letters. The service also provided employment for Civil War veterans as letter carriers. By the end of the 19th century, nearly 10,000 letter carriers were employed in over 400 cities.
8. SIPMCC_140706_036.JPG: Joseph Briggs and the first City Free Delivery Service carriers wore what they pleased on the job. But by 1868, uniforms were required, and carried had to buy their own. The neatly dressed carriers were easy to identify in matching blue-gray coats and pants.
9. SIPMCC_140706_049.JPG: By 1916, even with door knockers and whistles, letter carriers were still losing almost two hours daily waiting for patrons to come to the door. The Post Office Department decided that every household must have a mailbox or letter slot in order to receive mail.
10. SIPMCC_140706_055.JPG: Earning A Living Wage: With Free Home Delivery Service, letter carriers soon were working seven days a week with low pay and no vacations. Many were Civil War veterans, and in 1889 they gathered in Milwaukee to form a union, the National Association of Letter Carriers. In 1917 the union joined the American Federation of Labor. Many women and African Americans held their first federal jobs as Post Office employees. But women who were hired as carriers in wartime were laid off when the men returned. And for many years black and white postal workers were prohibited from working in the same offices.
11. SIPMCC_140706_066.JPG: Pneumatic Tube Service: Networks of pneumatic tubes speeded mail beneath city streets beginning in the 1890s. Pneumatic carriers holding 600 letters traveled at about 35 miles per hour. The tubes were introduced in 1893 in Philadelphia. Boston, Brooklyn, New York City, Chicago, and St. Louis also adopted the system. Soon these cities had over 56 miles of tubes. Suspended in World War I as an economy measure, the service was restored in New York and Boston after the war. By the 1950s, increasing mail volume and changing urban landscapes made pneumatic tubes impractical. Post offices and businesses could move easily, but the underground pneumatic system could not.
12. SIPMCC_140706_073.JPG: "[It is] a jam; stages, carriages, cartmen, expressmen, pedestrians, all melted together in one agglomerate mess." -- Description of Broadway, New York City, 1870 Traffic Jams and Mountains of Mail: Urban intersections were free-for-alls at the end of the 1800s. Traffic signals had not been invented, and reckless drivers fought for the right-of-way. By 1900, 3 million horses and an assortment of wagons and trolleys clogged U.S. city streets. The postal service had to find ways to transport a growing volume of mail through cities and deliver the mail to its destinations.
13. SIPMCC_140706_100.JPG: City Post Office: Wagons carried mailbags between railway stations and city post offices, which often were miles apart. Screen wagons, introduced in 1886 at Sherman, Texas, increased security as the mail moved between post offices, railroad stations, and steamboat landings. By 1915, post offices were being built as near as possible to railroad stations. This screen wagon, built about 1904, carried mail in Maryland until the 1920s, when motor vehicles came into greater use.
14. SIPMCC_140706_104.JPG: Designing the Perfect Mailbox
15. SIPMCC_140706_109.JPG: By the 1850s, adhesive postage stamps were available, and people no longer needed to go to the post office to mail letters. They could keep stamps at home and mail letters at their leisure. So the Post Office Department began to build and install mailboxes throughout U.S. cities. The first mailbox approved by the Post Office Department was fastened to curbside lampposts. Produced at a Philadelphia foundry run by Albert Potts, the box was supposed to protect the mail from theft and bad weather. But the design was not perfect. Can you see why? The box was too small, and carriers had to empty it many times during the day.
16. SIPMCC_140706_112.JPG: This mailbox, manufactured by the Reading, Pennsylvania, firm of Orr and Painter, could be hung anywhere. It was strong and held a large quantity of mail. But the design was not perfect. Can you guess why? In the ornate Victorian era of the 1880s, many Americans felt that these boxes ruined the elegant lampposts and buildings on which they hung.
17. SIPMCC_140706_116.JPG: In 1889, the Post Office Department ordered a new mailbox designed by Willard D. Doremus. All three sides held more than the Potts mailbox, but this style was not perfect. Can you see why? The mailboxes were shattered easily by thieves who made off with the mail. The lip above the slot often broke, letting it rain or snow. And it was very difficult to remove mail from the side of the box.
18. SIPMCC_140706_121.JPG: This sheet-metal mailbox was stronger than earlier models made of iron. It was designed in 1901 by Eugene D. Schleble, a Toledo, Ohio, dentist. The mailbox was not perfect, but for a special reason. The contract to make 49,000 of Schleble's mailboxes was obtained illegally. Several postal employees and contractors were charged with conspiracy and fraud as a result.
19. SIPMCC_140706_125.JPG: These sheet-metal mailboxes, produced by the Van Dorn Iron Works in Cleveland in 1905, protected mail against theft and weather and were convenient to use. But the design was still not perfect. Can you see why? These mailboxes were painted red, and people confused them with fire alarms. When they were repainted green, many found them ugly.
20. SIPMCC_140706_129.JPG: Roy J. Joroleman, an engineer assigned to the Post Office Department's mail equipment shop in Washington, D.C., designed the last type lamppost letter box used in this country. The last of the Joroleman type boxes were purchased on August 10, 1955. But the mailbox was not perfect. Thick mail did not always fit into this box.
21. SIPMCC_140706_132.JPG: Mailboxes that could accommodate packages were introduced in the late 1890s. The first package box was developed by the postmaster of Baltimore in 1897.
22. SIPMCC_140706_155.JPG: Dead Letters: Since colonial times, undeliverable letters have been forwarded to the Dead Letter Office. Clerks in the Dead Letter Office may open undelivered letters, but the contents are considered private. They are permitted to read only enough of the communication to determine where the letter should go. Between 1871 and 1900, over 11.7 million immigrants arrived in America. They settled in the cities of the Northeast and the farmlands of the Midwest and the Great Plains. These immigrants and their families often had limited knowledge of English and U.S. geography, and postal employees sometimes could not decipher the addresses on letters they wrote back and forth. These letters wound up in the Dead Letter Office.
23. SIPMCC_140706_159.JPG: "When we can all have the conveniences of city life in our country homes (and the free postal delivery is one of them) there will be less desire for city life." -- E.A. Wheeler, Westside, California, 1850s
24. SIPMCC_140706_163.JPG: Postmaster General John Wanamaker
25. SIPMCC_140706_169.JPG: American farmers were not the only advocates for free rural mail service. Newspaper publishers envisioned a newspaper a day in every farm mailbox. Another supporter or rural delivery was John Wanamaker, postmaster general from 1889 to 1893 and founder of one of the nation's first department stores. Wanamaker ordered the department to test the service in 1891. Some members of Congress thought Wanamaker might be trying to use the Post Office Department to build a vast customer base for a mail-order service in his department store. Others feared that Rural Free Delivery would be so popular that it would be hard to discontinue if it proved unprofitable.
26. SIPMCC_140706_172.JPG: After five years and two postmasters general< Congress allocated funds for a trial free rural delivery service. The new postmaster general, William L. Wilson, agreed to test the service if Congress agreed to a $40,000 appropriation. Congress was asked to designate 44 routes in 29 states. The first routes were located in Wilson's home state of West Virginia. On October 1, 1896, Rural Free Delivery was inaugurated in Alltown, Charles Town, and Uvilla. By April 1, 1897, service was also established in Hope, Indiana; Clarkesville, Arkansas; China Grove, North Carolina; Temple, Arizona; Brunswick, Maine; and North Yakima, Washington.
27. SIPMCC_140706_177.JPG: RFD Monument, Climax, Michigan: Residents of Climax, Michigan, saw the first Rural Free Delivery wagons stop at their homes on December 3, 1896. They were so grateful that they erected the nation's first monument to RFD. The memorial, which still stands, is made of small stones collected from each of the 230 farms along that first RFD route.
28. SIPMCC_140706_181.JPG: Reaching Rural America: City dwellers in the United States enjoyed free home mail delivery long before rural Americans. If you lived in the country, you had to go to the post office -- often in a country store -- to pick up mail. This often meant traveling over dirt roads that were full of potholes in dry weather and muddy swamps after rain, with no guarantee that mail had arrived. But postage rates were the same for city and rural mail. Farm families called the system unfair, and postal officials agreed. In 1896 they convinced Congress to support a trial delivery service to some rural areas. Sen. Eugene Hale of Maine and others in Congress feared the new service would be too expensive, and tried to cut its funding in 1899. But its popular support was overwhelming, and in 1902 Rural Free Delivery was officially established.
29. SIPMCC_140706_189.JPG: The Heart of the Community: For Americans in small towns and rural areas, the local post office is the central institution of the community. Even in cities, the branch and main post offices are places where nearly everyone goes at one time or another to buy stamps or mail a package. Because of the universal role of the post office in people's lives, the federal government has long used post offices to reach citizens and communicate with them on a variety of subjects.
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Description of Subject Matter: Customers and Communities
July 30, 1993 – Permanent
Level 1: Mail in America Galleries
By the turn of the 20th century, nearly 10,000 letter carriers worked in over 400 cities. The nation's population was expanding at top speed, and with it, the nation's mail volume and the need for personal mail delivery. This gallery focuses on the modern changes in mail service introduced at the beginning of the 20th century in the following sections:
* Serving the Cities: Crowded cities inspired postal officials to experiment with a variety of mail delivery systems, such as the impressive but ultimately impractical underground pneumatic tubes. Home delivery of mail began in the cities during the Civil War, when postal officials decided it was inhumane to require soldier's families to receive death notices at post office windows.
* Reaching Rural America: As rural Americans watched city residents receive free home delivery, they began to demand equal treatment. This was the start of Rural Free Delivery. Facets of Rural Free Delivery and its important and often heart warming role in the fabric of the nation is explored with photographs, mail vehicles, and a variety of rural mailboxes. A more contentious argument at the turn of the century centered around Parcel Post Service. Because Parcel Post would allow goods to be sent through the mail, individuals would have access to more merchandise, and no longer would rely on local shopkeepers. Parcel Post helped to usher in an era of consumerism by the early 20th century that foreshadowed the massive mechanization and automation of mail and the mail-order industry. Today, mail service is a vital conduit for big business.
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Natl Postal Museum -- Exhibit (MIA Galleries 3): Customers and Communities) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2005_DC_SIPM_Communities: DC -- Natl Postal Museum -- Exhibit (MIA Galleries 3): Customers and Communities (5 photos from 2005)
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Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [(Smithsonian) Postal Museum] [Display ALL (Smithsonian) Postal Museum photos] [Museums (History)] [Museums (Other)]
2014 photos: Equipment this year: I mostly used my Fuji XS-1 camera but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Trips this year: three Civil War Trust conferences (Winchester, VA, Nashville, TN, and Atlanta, GA), Michigan to visit mom in the hospice before she died and then a return trip after she died, and my 9th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Las Vegas, Reno, Carson City, Sacramento, Oakland, and Los Angeles). Ego strokes: Paul Dickson used one of my photos as the author photo in his book "Aphorisms: Words Wrought by Writers". Number of photos taken this year: just over 470,000.
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